Longtime J.D. Power exec Tucker named CEO of DealerRater.com

DETROIT -- Online car dealer review site DealerRater.com has named Gary Tucker as the company’s first CEO.

Tucker, 49, takes over a role that had been split between founder Chip Grueter, 37, and Vice President Jamie Oldershaw, 40, since 2002.

Tucker spent 12 years at J.D. Power and Associates, most recently as senior vice president of global product management and marketing, reporting directly to the company’s president. He was responsible for developing products and services as well as developing brand marketing.

Prior to his work at J.D. Power, Tucker served as vice president of marketing and product planning for American Isuzu Motors Inc. for three years. He also held various marketing and sales positions with GE Capital Auto Financial Services.

At DealerRater, Tucker will be responsible for building on the consumer review and content marketing aspects of the company.

“Given his global marketing and retail experience within the automotive industry, Gary was an ideal choice to lead DealerRater through the next critical phase in our growth story,” Grueter said in a statement.

J.D. Power and DealerRater have started working closer with each other -- allowing some recipients of the J.D. Power proprietary customer satisfaction and other surveys if they also wish to write a review of the dealership where they did business.

The agreement could eventually give automakers, dealers and the public immediate feedback from the thousands of consumers responding to questionnaires that feed Power’s Customer Service Index and Sales Satisfaction Index surveys. Typically, those studies are published annually and are based on questionnaires mailed months before the results are released.

DealerRater was founded in 2002 and features nearly 41,000 car dealers in the United States and Canada. It hosts nearly 1.4 million customer reviews of dealers and vehicles and displays more than 1 million vehicles for sale.

Dave Barkholz contributed to this report.